Traction control for a non-moving (stuck) vehicle may be challenging due to potential customer dissatisfaction. Stuck vehicle conditions may occur when traveling up an icy drive-way, parking and/or sinking in a soft surface rut where the vehicle's driven wheels loose traction to the road surface and simply spin without moving the vehicle. When a stuck vehicle condition is sensed by a vehicle controller, traction control may be activated. Typically, traction control overrides a driver's torque request and instead operates the engine at a reduced torque output to reduce the wheel spin by decreasing the engine torque and/or increasing wheel braking. The reduced wheel spin increases the traction between the wheels and road surface, which may result in the vehicle's moving.
However, such traction control may not always be successful in moving the vehicle. Further, lack of control on a vehicle operation during the traction control may result in customer dissatisfaction. For example, under some conditions, no matter how much a driver presses an accelerator pedal, changes in vehicle operations (e.g., tire whine or engine operation) cannot be noticed by the driver. Further, in some conditions, the driver may find that extra slip or changing slip achieved when the vehicle is back in a normal operation mode would actually help dig out or otherwise free the vehicle, which may further frustrate the driver due to lack of control in traction control mode.